Photo: Voloshky Ukrainian Dance Ensemble
The arts and culture thrive at Rutgers University-Newark, with a diverse palette of special events, many free, over the next few months. Here are some to choose from.
MUSIC/DANCE
Voloshky Ukrainian Dance Ensemble, March 31, 3:30 p.m., Jim Wise Theater, Kupfrian Hall, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) campus, Newark. Presented by the Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience and the Rutgers University-Newark-NJIT Theatre Arts Program.
Jazz, With An International Flavor, March 23, Toshiko Akiyoshi – Lew Tabackin Quartet. John Cotton Dana Library, Dana Room; 2:30-4 p.m. (free admission). Sponsored through the Jazz Concert Series of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies
Concert featuring String, Wind and Jazz Ensembles, May 4, 2:30 p.m., New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) Campus Center Atrium. FREE ADMISSION. Presented by the Rutgers University-Newark-NJIT Theatre Arts Program
Rutgers University-Newark Chorus Concerts
Sunday, May 1, 3 p.m., St. Mary’s Abbey Church, 528 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. (at the corner of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and William Street); $5 seniors, $10 general admission, $25 preferred seating.
Wednesday, May 4, 2:30 p.m., on-campus concert (exact location to be determined). “Mass in G” by Franz Schubert with strings and organ, as well as other choral favorites to celebrate the legacy of Dr. John Floreen. Free admission.
THEATER
Platanos, Collard Greens, Y Callaloo, Feb.10, 5:30 p.m. (doors open: 5 p.m.); Paul Robeson Campus Center Essex Room, 350 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.FREE ADMISSION but please bring non-perishable food donations for Isaiah’s House; refreshments provided.
The RU-N-NJIT Theatre Arts Program presents:
Readings of short student plays, Feb. 3, 7 p.m. Directed by Louis Wells, Dramaturg, Michele Rittenhouse. Bradley Hall Theatre, 110 Warren St., Rutgers University-Newark campus. FREE ADMISSION.
Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rock Musical, March 2-5, 7 p.m., March 6, 2:30 p.m., Jim Wise Theatre, Kupfrian Hall, NJIT campus. Lyrics by Tim Rice, music by Andrew Lloyd Weber, directed by Michael Kerley. Tickets: $15, general admission; under 15, free.
Hamlet, April 20-23, 7 p.m.; April 24, 2:30 p.m., Bradley Hall Theatre, 110 Warren St., Rutgers University-Newark campus. Play by William Shakespeare, directed by Louis Wells. Tickets: $15, general admission; under 15, free.
TALKS AND LECTURES
Jazz Talks
Sponsored by the Rutgers Insitute of Jazz Studies. All talks are held in the John Cotton Dana Library, Dana Room, from 7-9 p.m. (free admission)
Feb. 17, Lucky Thompson on European Radio and Television, 1957-1962 by Noal Cohen
March 30, In the Diaspora of the Diaspora by Allen Lowe
April 20, One Step Beyond: Grachan Moncur III and Newark’s Jazz Culture by Sean Singer.
Author Talks
Sponsored by the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program at RU-N. All talks are 5:30-7 p.m., Paul Robeson Campus Center, 350 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.; free admission. More details at http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/webfm_send/2132.
March 8
Poet Nickole Brown, author of Fanny Says, a collection of poems; her debut, Sister, a novel-in-poems published by Red Hen Press in 2007; and an anthology, Air Fare, that she co-edited with Judith Taylor. She is an assistant professor at University of Arkansas at Little Rock; nickolebrown.com
March 8
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of five books: Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry (stories), two novels, The Giant’s House and Niagara Falls All Over Again, and the memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. Her most recent book, Thunderstruck & Other Stories, won The Story Prize in 2015.
She holds the James A. Michener Chair in Fiction at the University of Texas, Austin.
April 14
Poet Claudia Rankine is the author of Citizen: An American Lyric; Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; Plot; The End of the Alphabet; and Nothing in Nature is Private. Citizen: An American Lyric, the first book ever to be named an NBCC finalist in both the poetry and criticism categories, won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. In 2014 she was a National Book Award Finalist, and received Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize. Her work is included in several anthologies, including Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present; Best American Poetry 2001; Giant Step: African American Writing at the Crossroads of the Century; and The Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African-American Poetry.
April 14
Sarah Schulman, a novelist, historian, playwright, and gay rights activist, is the author of numerous novels, including The Sophie Horowitz Story; Girls, Visions and Everything; After Dolores (winner of the American Library Association Stonewall Book Award); People In Trouble;, Empathy; Rat Bohemia; Shimmer; The Mere Future; and The Child. Her journalism includes My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years and Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America (winner of the Stonewall Award); The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination; and Israel/Palestine and the Queer International. Her new novel, The Cosmopolitans, set in Greenwich Village in 1958, is forthcoming from Feminist Press in 2016.
Media contact: Carla Capizzi, capizzi@rutgers.edu
